


where do we go from here?

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, copfic, this is weird af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:55:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4588632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“We swore.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We don’t make oaths like knights of yore, Brienne.”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	where do we go from here?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrioritiesSorted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/gifts).



“Brienne. Brienne.  Can you hear me?  Brienne.”

She can, but she can’t move her lips. They are dry, cracked, chafing. Her eyes are heavy. She wants to open them, but she can’t.

“Brienne?”

She hears him.  And a beeping sound.  A steady beeping sound.  Beep. Beep.  Beep.  She takes a deeper breath than before, and the beeping changes pace infinitesimally. A heart monitor.

“Brienne?”

She opens her mouth to respond and hears a rattling sound that could be an attempt at speech.  She opens her eyes and finds herself in a dimly lit room. It’s the middle of the night, and she sees stars twinkling outside of the window. She lets her gaze drop to the person next to her.

“Pod?” she manages.  She’s glad he’s got a short nickname.  Easy to say with dry lips.

“Thank the gods,” he says.  He’s ashen faced, and there’s dried blood on his cheek.  “Do you want water?”

She wants to nod but she can’t.  So she just opens her mouth and Pod, ever observant, and far quicker than anyone ever gave him credit for, tips some water between her cracked lips.

_Water. Rain streaming, blood pooling._

Her eyes widen and though she can barely open her mouth, she tries to sit up.

“We’re safe,” Pod says quickly.  “They’re safe.  Arya’s in intensive care, and Sansa’s having her bloodwork done, but they’re safe.” 

Brienne sags back against the pillows.

“Where?” she asks.  Her voice is so dry, and Pod holds up the cup of water again to her lips and she opens them and he tips more into her mouth as he says,

“We’re at the Seventh Sanctuary Hospice on the Quiet Isle,” he says.  “I let…” his voice trails away.  “I let _him_ know we’re here.  And that everyone’s safe.  He hasn’t gotten back to me though.”

Brienne nods slowly, amazed that she can nod. There’s a little tubey thing under her nose.  _Oxygen._

“How bad am I?” she asks, and Pod winces.

“Bad.  But you’ll be all right.”

She tries to say “good,” but can’t make her lips move anymore.  Her eyelids drift closed, and she lets herself sink back into sleep.

 

-

 

She sees Catelyn Stark bending over her, her face ripped and bloody, her eyes filled with hate.  _False friend_ , she says and her voice sounds like death.

 _No,_ Brienne tries to say, _No.  I saved them.  They’re safe.  I won’t let anything happen to them!  They won’t be like your boys!_

Hands are around her throat.  And rope.  And she’s swinging from a tree, garbed in blue armor—blue armor? Her police uniform. Her uniform.  Not armor.  Under armor, perhaps—a bullet proof vest, useless to a noose. But blue steel? Blue steel.  _No! They’re safe!  Pod said they are safe!_ But Pod’s swinging from the tree as well. _Please! Let him go!  He didn’t do anything!  He saved them too!  Please, Lady Catelyn._

Lady Catelyn?  She’s no lady.  It’s the Seven Republics of Westeros now, not Seven Kingdoms, but that doesn’t mean anything.  _Please.  Mercy. Mother have mercy._

_The gods don’t have mercy.  That’s why they’re gods.  My sister used to say that._

Jaime’s standing before her now, his green eyes shining like emeralds and his lips a little too red.  _Have you ever loved someone so much you wanted to kill them, Brienne?_ His lips are melting off his face like blood and his skin is growing mottled like Catelyn Stark’s and it’s a fever dream, a fever dream, a fever fever fever dream that makes him look like his dead sister, hair longer, eyes blank, strangulation marks on her neck not from a noose from hands— _hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm._    

Pod hums that to himself sometimes. Or sings it.  Says that Tyrion Lannister used to sing it all the time, and it got it stuck in Pod’s head.

She looks to her left.  Pod’s still struggling with his noose.

 _Jaime!_ she tries to shout, but her lips are heavy and her throat won’t make a sound now. _Jaime! Help him!  He’s only a boy._

But Jaime’s dead too.  Dead like his sister, strangled and blank eyed and Brienne tries to scream but she can’t, there’s a rope around her neck.

 

-

 

_“Ah. Tarth.”_

_“Sir?”_

_“Sit down.”_

_“Yes sir.”_

_“I’m afraid to say that you and I are in a bit of a bind right now.”_

_“Sir?”_

_“Catelyn Stark is dead, and her daughters don’t seem to be in custody anymore. So you and I can’t very well keep our promise now, can we.”_

_“We have to try.”_

_“Have to?”_

_“We swore.”_

_“We don’t make oaths like knights of yore, Brienne.”_

_“But—”_

_“But you’re right.  We have to try. Gods only know what became of those girls, and I don’t like to think on it.  And even if I’m not—ah—overly fond of Catelyn Stark…it seems as though it’s the least we can try to do now that all this has been put to bed.”_

_“To bed? Isn’t there going to be—”_

_“A trial? God no.  My father will see to that, I’m sure. They were insurgents, the Starks. And it was a police action that—”_

_“The police_ didn’t _cause that.”_

_“No. But it was a police action. Like the War of the Fivepennies. Not technically a war. No war declared. A police action. Ordered by the state.”_

_“Ordered by—”_

_“Listen, Tarth. Those girls aren’t safe. Wherever they are, they aren’t safe.  They’re both still under age, I refuse to believe they can be held accountable the way that Robb Stark was in the end.  So yes, I plan to keep my promise to Catelyn Stark.  Or rather, you’re going to keep it for me.”_

_“Me, sir?”_

_“Yes. You’re going to go after them. I’ll put something else in the books.  Some sort of…I don’t know. There’s so much confusion right now that I’ll think of something.  But you go and you find them and you get them somewhere safe and, please, try and keep them from seeking some sort of vengeance?  Their mother wouldn’t want that.”_

_“Wouldn’t she?”_

_“She wouldn’t want to see her last children dead, would she?  If they try anything, they’ll end up dead.  That Stark name is already a chip on their shoulders. But you won’t hold it against them, I’m sure.”_

_“No sir.”_

_“Good.”_

_“Will I have a partner?”_

_“Do you trust anyone else with this?  Of course you won’t have a partner.”  A pause.  “I might have an intern for you though.  If I think he’s trustworthy.”_

 

_-_

 

Brienne wakes again to sunshine streaming into the hospital room and Pod snoring lightly in his chair by her side. There’s someone else in the chair next to him, but she’s not looking at Brienne.  She’s looking out the window.

She’s wearing a hospital gown too, and there’s a plastic band around her wrist.  She’s got a bruise on her cheek and a scratch on her eye and she’s very thin. Or maybe she just looks gaunt.

“Sansa,” Brienne says, and she turns to look at her with eyes that look so like her mother. 

“How are you feeling?” Sansa asks her. Timid, hesitant. Brienne sees her fingers come to play with her plastic wristband, a nervous fidget in the presence of a stranger.

“Like one of the seven hells spat me out,” Brienne says.  She tries to sit up, and winces.  “And you?”

Sansa looks down at her hands.  There are scratches there too.  Scrabbles.  “All right, I suppose,” she says.  “Better than I could be.”  She looks back at Brienne, and her eyes are empty, like whatever thoughts she’s got are too deep in her head to show through Catelyn’s eyes. “I…where do we go from here?”

Brienne looks at Pod, who lets out another snuffling snore.  She could ask Sansa to hand her Pod’s phone, to see if Jaime got back to Pod, but she doesn’t. “Is there a newspaper?” she asks instead, looking around the hospital room. 

Sansa gets to her feet and crosses to an empty ward bed, bringing back a copy of the Gulltown Courrier.

Brienne glances at the paper and almost chokes.

_Jaime Lannister in Custody for the Murder of Sister, Cersei Lannister._

_The things I do for love.  Have you ever loved someone so much you wanted to kill them, Brienne?_

“He’s an evil man,” Sansa says, her voice dark. “They’re all evil. Lannisters.”

 _He sent me to save you.  From a man thrice as evil._ But she doesn’t say that aloud.  She just stares at the picture of Jaime and knows that that’s it.  That’s the end for him.

 

-

 

She’s drowning in roses.  Drowning in them.  But they’re not corsages like the ones she wore to her prom when she was young.  They’re half-dead and drooping, and she sees Ronnet laughing as he throws more at her, hears Hyle saying _How beautiful you are, Brienne_ and others—too many to count, throwing roses at her. 

She tries to wipe them away, but they attach to her arm and begin to grow from her blue armor—still her blue armor. It’s so unpractical for policework.  Loud, and heavy, and won’t even stop a bullet properly.  She tries to swipe it away, brush them away with blue gauntlets, but they start growing from her hands as well.

 _Here. Try this_.  Jaime—strangled bloodymouthed Jaime—hands her a sword. It’s a beautiful sword, with a lion hilt and made of a steel that’s darker than it should be. She cuts the roses away with it and they fall to the ground turning to dust as she does.

 _Thank you,_ she tells him.

 _The things I do for love_ , he says again and his face flushes with blood and for a moment, Brienne thinks he meant love of her, but the blood doesn’t stop rushing to his face and he reaches his hands up to his own throat and he’s choking himself. 

 _No! Don’t!_ she tries to break his own grip on his neck, but now she’s got hands growing out of her gauntlet, and she looks at her sword. _No. I won’t._

But he’s dying and she can’t let him die, so she raises the sword and cuts one of his hands loose, feeling blood spray her face, or maybe those are tears.

 

-

 

“ _I won’t lie, if they find me.”_

_“Do you think they will?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Truly?”_

_“I don’t know. I think I want them to though. A part of me died with her, you know.”_

_“Why did you do it?”_

_“Have you ever loved someone so much you wanted to kill them, Brienne?”_

_“I’ve never been in love.”_

_“Lucky you.”_

_“Can it be love if you want to kill them?”_

_“Love’s the only thing that would have made me kill her.  Even if I hated her, I loved her.”_

_“Jaime—”_

_“You should go. And only use a burner phone to contact me.  If this mess breaks while you’re gone, I don’t want any of you tied to me, you got that?”_

 

_-_

 

They let her up, though they shouldn’t. She’s aware of that the moment she sets her bare feet on the ground and everything hurts.  But they don’t stop her.  Maybe they see the determination in her eyes. Or maybe it’s something else.

Brienne’s never had much faith in any of the gods, not after her brothers— _The gods don’t have mercy, that’s why they’re gods_ —so these monk doctors who lead her towards the ICU are as alien to her as it’s possible to be.  Some of them are cowled and their faces are hidden, sworn to silence, while others wear scrubs in bright floral colors and pat her on the arm comfortingly as she stumbles through the hallways with her walker, Pod at her side and Sansa trailing after her.  One of the cowled monks follows her, and Brienne can only guess that he’s Sansa’s attending nurse, or something.  Brienne doesn’t seem to have one so much as three who watch her from a distance and make her at least pretend that she has some freedom of movement. 

Pod holds open the door to the ward and she makes her way down it, finding Gendry _not Renly_ sitting next to Arya Stark’s bedside, a steady beep beep beep of her heart monitor the only thing showing that the lifeless-looking girl was alive after all.

 One of the attendings pulls up a seat for Brienne, who takes it gratefully.

“Five broken ribs and a punctured lung,” Gendry tells Brienne, who hadn’t known how to ask just yet.  “But she’s alive.  And she’ll live.”

Brienne nods.  Arya looks nothing like her mother or sister.  She looks like no one that Brienne’s ever known, but how quickly had the two of them fallen into step with one another? It had felt natural. More natural, even, than it had with Pod. 

She’s young.  So young—younger than she seems, and there are dark circles under her eyes constantly.  _But she’s safe now.  You’re safe now, Arya.  I’ll take care of you._

 _I can’t even take care of myself_ , but she hushes that voice.  _And it was me that put you in that hospital bed to begin with.  If I hadn’t been so stupid_ but she hushes that voice too.

 

-

 

They are lying at her feet, corpses, people she couldn’t save.  First Renly _not Gendry_ then Catelyn who looks like Sansa but older and more defeated.  She’s still wearing her blue armor, and carrying her sword, but she’s not wearing a helmet but her police hat.  _I was the law. Who could stop me? Who would?  No one wanted Aerys alive._

She sees Jaime, corpselike, and Cersei, like a statue, pristine.  _I was the law.  Who could stop me?  Who would? The things I do for love. Have you ever loved someone so much you wanted to kill them, Brienne?_

_I’ve never been in love._

_Lucky you._

_No. Not lucky me.  Why would that make me lucky?_

Her sword drips with blood and she turns and there’s Catelyn again, her face mottled and bleeding.  _False friend or true?_ she asks this time, her eyes narrowed.

_Your girls are safe.  I have kept my oath. I will until I die._

_False friend or true?_

_True._ She kneels and extends her sword, dripping with blood. 

 _Rise, Brienne the Blue,_ says Renly’s corpse.  _My own truest knight._

_But you died. I couldn’t save you._

_Rise, Brienne the Oathkeeper,_ says Catelyn.  _Oathkeeper._

_Brienne we need to run._

_Run as fast as you can.  Don’t look back, I’ll follow._

_But—_

Go _, Sansa._

_I’ll not leave you._

_I’ll be right behind.  I’ll have Arya. Go.  Now._

_But_

_There’s no time for this_

A gunshot

A scream her scream his scream all of them screaming she can’t tell. 

_Run! Run now!_

_You said you’d keep them safe,_ Catelyn is crouching over Arya’s bleeding body.

_She’s alive. The monks said so._

_You said_

_I_

_False friend or true?_

 

-

 

_“I’m surprised you can still look at me.  I can hardly look at me.  Yes. Just like that. That horror, that disappointment. Go on.  Tell me I’m a monster. I’m used to that. People have been calling me that behind my back for years.  I can take it from you.”_

_“Can you?”_

 

-

 

“Where do we go from here?” Pod asks quietly. Arya’s awake today, and sitting with Sansa and Gendry, who both seem more relaxed now they know she’s not dead, even if they knew before she wasn’t dead, but she looked it too much to be sure. 

Brienne looks at him and for a moment, she’s tempted to let her own fear wash over her, her own nervousness, her own misery. But Pod’s only a boy—barely older than Sansa.  So she doesn’t. Instead, she looks back at the little assembled group.  She wonders, only for a moment, if Jaime had had anything planned, or if he’d not gotten that far.  It’s a useless thought.

“North, I suppose.  Somewhere safe.”

She doesn’t know where, in truth.  She doesn’t know if she’ll ever know. But _you’re stubborn as a mule.  An ugly mule._ she’ll be damned if she gives up before the hard part’s even gotten started.

 


End file.
